Michael RyooView profile
Associate Professor
Michael Ryoo serves as a SUNY Empire Innovation Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University while concurrently working as a Research Scientist with Google Brain's "Robotics at Google" team. Previously, he held positions as an Assistant Professor at Indiana University Bloomington and a Staff Researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His academic background includes a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin (2008) and a B.S. from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2004. Ryoo's research centers on deep learning and computer vision with specific focus on convolutional neural network (CNN) models for video semantic understanding. His work bridges visual perception and robotic action through applications in robot perception, robot learning, and human-robot interaction. Key innovations involve developing efficient architectures for processing multimodal data and translating visual understanding into robotic control systems. Analysis of his 15 most recent publications reveals strong emphasis on multimodal AI integration, particularly vision-language models applied to robotics. His 2025 work shows significant advancement in token-efficient video representation, motion-controllable diffusion models, and zero-shot learning frameworks specifically designed for robotic control systems. The research trajectory demonstrates consistent focus on making video understanding more accessible and applicable to real-world robotic scenarios. Scientific awards: No awards were mentioned in the provided source material. Regarding academic advising, the source text does not list any students or mentoring activities. Similarly, no grant funding information is provided, though his dual academic-industry role suggests substantial research support. His Google Brain affiliation likely involves industry-sponsored research initiatives. Ryoo maintains active laboratory affiliations through Stony Brook's AI Innovation Institute and Google's Robotics team. His prior work at NASA JPL indicates experience with space robotics systems, while his current Google role focuses on large-scale robot learning infrastructure. The LAM SIMULATOR project represents his current focus on advancing data generation techniques for training large action models.








